Elias Muhanna

In the spring of 2010, three Lebanese comic-book artists were ordered to come to the Beirut headquarters of the Directorate of General Security, where the country’s censorship authorities are located. Omar Khouri, Hatem Imam, and Fadi (the Fdz) Baki were in their early thirties, and had known one another since they were kids. (I’ve known Khouri and Baki since then as well.) In 2007, they founded Samandal, a trilingual comic magazine based in Beirut, which became an important platform for Middle Eastern comic artists. “When we were first called in, we had no idea what was going on,” Khouri said. “We assumed that there was a problem with our publishing license or some missing paperwork.”

By: Emily Holman

Normal 0 false false false FR AR-SA Two days after my arrival in Lebanon in mid-July, and almost one month after the publication of Pope Francis’s most recent papal encyclical, Laudato Si’, collection of the nation’s rubbish reached a standstill. Activists and residents of environs surrounding the Naameh landfill, in mountains south-east of Beirut, refused to accept any more rubbish following a planned closure for the site scheduled for July 17^th, which had already been postponed since January. When the government tried to continue to use the site, residents took matters into their own hands, and blocked the roads to the Naameh landfill. With nowhere to go, the rubbish could not be collected. Garbage piled up. People marched on the streets and threw eggs in protest at government inability both to respond to the situation, and to take the preventive measures that became necessary long ago.

By Joseph Kechichian, Senior Writer

Beirut: A few days after Moscow deployed several warplanes to a Syrian airbase near Latakia, presumably to prop up the regime of Bashar Al Assad which lost significant ground to rebel forces since the beginning of the year, Washington reiterated its ongoing support to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), as it announced the disbursement of fresh funds to acquire defensive weapons.

“I am very pleased to announce today that my government is allotting an additional $59 million for border security equipment for the army,” declared US Ambassador David Hale after meeting Prime Minister Tammam Salam at the Grand Serail [Government House] on Wednesday.

Except for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which offered a $3 billion grant to Beirut in late December 2013 to purchase weapons from France—another $1 billion was added in August 2014 to boost the country’s counter-terrorism forces—the United States was one of the few countries that stood by Lebanon, and for so long.

BEIRUT | iloubnan.info -

The 15th edition of the Beirut International Film Festival (BIFF) will open on October 7 with The Little Prince, an animation movie by Amercian director Mark Osborne, based on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s famous novel. The festival will close on October 15 with He named me Malala, by Amercian director Davis Guggenheim, an intimate portrait of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, to be released in the United States on October 2, and internationally on November 5.

BIFF Director Colette Naufal held a press conference at downtown Beirut’s Le Gray Hotel on Wednesday, saying: “The current situation in Lebanon and the image generated by foreign media coverage have had a negative effect on BIFF. This has had an impact on the presence of guests, many of whom have decided against coming to Beirut.” However, “the jury should be co-presided by French-Argentinan writer and director Santiago Amigorena and Brazilian-American director Jonathan Nossiter", she said. Jury members are: American writer Michael Greenberg, Austrian Film critic and journalist Alexandra Zawia, and Tunisian-Russian director and actress Doria-Svetlana Achour. However, the presence of all these figures now hinges on the developments.”